If you lived here, you'd be home nowhttps://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com
A little place to write about all the things I do at home
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Applesauce Oat Muffinshttps://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/applesauceoatmuffins/
https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/applesauceoatmuffins/#commentsMon, 21 Dec 2015 12:30:25 +0000http://coritaitz.com/?p=410

These lovely, spiced muffins are the perfect after school snack – sweet yet low in sugar, high in fiber, universally appealing, and made with ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry and fridge.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°. Lightly grease a muffin tin with cooking spray, or line with paper muffin liners.

Prepare topping: In a small bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup oats, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon. Add 1 tablespoon melted butter and mix together until well combined; set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together the applesauce, brown sugar, milk, oil, vanilla and egg. Add to dry ingredients and mix just until moistened.

Divide batter evenly into 12 muffin cups. Place a bit of the topping on each muffin.

Bake at for 16 – 18 or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for a few minutes in the pans. Remove muffins from pans and cool on a wire rack.

This is my favorite filling, healthy lunch during the chilly late Fall and Winter months. It feeds a crowd, but it freezes well. It’s earthy, hearty, smoky. It’s also vegan, but I sometimes make it with chicken stock and/or add kielbasa (one package, diced) after the veggies have had a chance to sweat for a few minutes.Ingredients

Directions
Heat the oil in a large, heavy bottomed pot over medium low. Add the shallots and carrots, and saute for at least 10 minutes, stirring them occasionally. It shouldn’t sizzle too loudly, this is a slow-cooking kind of process. When the carrots are slightly softened, add the celery, thyme, cumin, and paprika and saute for another 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and stir until very fragrant, about another minute or two.
Add the can of tomatoes and stir to coat vegetables. Cook out the tomatoes for about 5 minutes so as to remove some of their tinniness. Add drained lentils and stir to coat in the vegetables, oil and tomatoes. Add a splash of the stock and scrape any browned bits on the bottom of the pot. Add remaining stock, a few big pinches of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper, then give the whole mix a good stir and bring to a boil. Once boiling, return pot to a simmer, cover with a heavy lid and allow to cook for 25-30 minutes or until the lentils are soft. Check in on the pot once in a while and give it a stir. Season to your liking with salt and pepper.

On our yoga mats, we work hard to cultivate proper alignment. Practicing alignment in asana is like eating your vegetables everyday: If you commit to it, you’ll have a healthier practice and a healthier body. We do these things in the spirit of ahimsa, of non-violence and non-injury. Ahimsa encompasses not just physical injury and violence, but also the pain we could potentially cause with our thoughts and attitudes. Being respectful toward every mind, body, and spirit, including our own, is the foundation of ahimsa, which creates proper alignment for all of our thoughts.

This is so because the way we think and perceive things can be harmful and cause pain to ourselves and our loved ones, our communities, and even to our planet. These mental misalignments influence our behavior and color our perceptions, which are the lens through which we see the world. They also have an enormous influence how we ourselves are, in turn, perceived. Whether it’s true or not, other people will often see in us what we choose to see in them, thus perpetuating a cycle of harmful misperception.

To realign our thoughts and habits in keeping with ahimsa, the yoga sutras state that, when negative thoughts or situations arise, we should instead bring opposite ideas to mind. This practice is called pratipaksha bhavanam.

Cultivating an opposite thought requires first acknowledging what is negative or potentially harmful, then stepping back from it. From this different perspective, we can observe the situation with more clarity and examine it from all sides. From there, we can ponder how to move our thoughts back in the direction of ahimsa, ideally before we respond or react in a way that could potentially harm ourselves or others.

Obviously, this is hardest to do when it’s most needed. When our emotions become intense, we often let them call the shots in all aspects of our lives. They pop up at irrelevant, inappropriate times, much like garden weeds stealing vital energy from vegetable seedlings. If left untended, these emotions will crowd out the roots of our mental bounty, our ahimsa, and life will become unnecessarily tedious and stressful. Pratipaksha bhavanam, in this regard, is like mental weed killer. It gives our positive ideas and attitudes space to flourish by wilting our reflexive affectations.

This practice came into my life four years ago, though, at the time, I didn’t know its name or its place in yogic philosophy. My older daughter, then eight years old, had fallen from the monkey bars and fractured three vertebrae. The worry and stress in the days following her accident was blindingly intense. I literally could not, would not see anything else. Over time, as her recovery progressed and my stress blinders came off, waves of emotion would continue to hit me randomly, like a static shock or a truck on the sidewalk. They ran the gamut – relief that she’d be fine, amazement at her luck, worry that one of the fractures would become unstable and claim a portion of her mobility, and a fierce, primal sense of protectiveness. I’d get teary on a whim. I’d check on her constantly and ask her to wiggle her toes, which she grew to barely tolerate. I didn’t want to annoy her or inadvertently cause her more stress, so I used every bit of willpower I could muster to dial my external worry down a notch. In doing that, I inadvertently became more mindful about the trajectory of my thoughts. Those random flashes of relief and amazement eventually morphed into bottomless gratitude, which I channeled whenever overwhelming thoughts surfaced. My anxiety and worry were still present, but didn’t feel as heavy when counterbalanced by purposeful, positive ideas. This practice saved my sanity during an extremely difficult time. It allowed me to experience moments of clarity when I could have been pulled into a vortex of worry and suffering. More importantly, it also allowed me to be fully present for my daughter. Being able to see her as herself and not through the lens of her injury helped me realize that sometimes our emotions, even when they’re justified, can prevent us from thinking clearly, living authentically, and allowing others to do the same.

More recently, I’ve used this practice to help remain calm during a very sudden, extremely stressful move. We had been complaining to our landlords about the saggy attic door, the drafty windows, the outdated kitchen, and cracks in the walls for years to no avail. Early this Fall, the mice took advantage of the structural weaknesses and moved in, causing my son’s asthma to flare up significantly and rendering the pantry and kitchen pretty much unusable.

We complained again, much more insistently this time, and had a health inspection done to determine the extent of the problems. It revealed many mice in virtually every room, yes, but also mold and structural damage from termites. In response to our efforts to make our home livable and after eight years of uneventful tenancy, our landlords retaliated with a 30-day notice to vacate. Not only is this illegal, but for a family of five just before Winter, it’s potentially disastrous. We faced the possibility of couch surfing indefinitely, the reality of having to put our personal belongings in storage for an extended period of time, and the horrifying chance that we wouldn’t find a new place in our current school district and/or not find a new place in a timely manner at all.

But…even though the stress was overwhelming, I tried to keep focusing on the fact that we were no longer living in such a poorly maintained place. When my 9 year old cried everyday, grieving the only home she’s known, I honored her emotions and gave her extra love, but also took the opportunity to be mindfully, quietly relieved that she’d no longer have to deal with mice nibbling through her dress-up clothes or a too-chilly room during the Winter. When my older daughter became ill from the stress of being untethered and missed a week of school, she and I were both grateful that she was able to convalesce in my mother-in-law’s comfy, cozy apartment instead of a home that could potentially make her even sicker – even if that home still felt very much like home.

My son, who is in high school, said, “You know, I know we’ll definitely end up somewhere nicer and better, but wherever we end up next will probably never really feel like home to me.” This shattered my heart and caused me to feel blinding rage toward my landlords. Yet, how could he spend his last couple years of childhood in a home where he couldn’t even breathe? Where we end up might not ever feel like home for him, that’s heartbreakingly true, but at least he’ll be able to be there and stay healthy. At least he’ll be able to put his trust in the promise of a healthy home. I’ve been working hard to remember that when anger bubbles up.

I kept talking, too. I talked to anyone who’d listen because it forced me to verbalize my emotions – positive and negative – and accept comfort and support. In doing so, our community was mobilized. People have helped, fed, hugged, sheltered, then they spread the word and recruited more help. It was astounding! With so much to be grateful for, it became easier to starve the infuriating and stressful aspects of the situation and feed the good parts – the love, the support, the fact that this move is ultimately for the best, especially in terms of our health.

My biggest hope in this situation, practically speaking, is that we’ll now have the opportunity to save enough to buy a place of our own and never deal with any apathetic, soulless landlords again. Emotionally, I hope that the response from our community is what my children remember when they eventually look back on this. And that, when they do, the true goodness that emerged when we most needed it is a memory strong enough to permanently fade the dark, crude aspects of this story. That can be the beginning of their own pratipaksha bhavanam practices. I hope.

Ultimately, it takes effort, a great deal of it sometimes, but when pratipaksha bhavanam becomes a part of life, the mind eventually reconditions itself to work creatively, not reactively, during times of stress. Difficult circumstances become an exercise in keeping the mind and heart open to different perspectives so that we might redirect our thoughts and cultivate a semblance of calm. Those calming ideas, when allowed to thrive, are what align our thoughts back toward ahimsa like flowers toward the sunlight, then allow us to live happier, more fulfilling lives.

]]>https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/growinggratitude/feed/0ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenowsummer-photo-sunflowers-sunTraining, Teaching, and Other Goings Onhttps://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/training-teaching-and-other-goings-on/
https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/training-teaching-and-other-goings-on/#respondWed, 01 Jul 2015 22:18:15 +0000http://coritaitz.com/?p=270Oh my goodness, I’m actually posting something here for the first time in over 6 months. Hurrah for a break in the static!

Since I last wrote, I finished my 200 hour teacher training and am now officially a certified yoga teacher. Yay! The training was wonderful, but definitely intense. A typical day involved about 3 hours of asana, followed by practical lessons in anatomy and sequencing, a bit of practice teaching, and some discussion about the sutras or a niche specialty within yoga (restorative, prenatal, teaching beginners, etc). We also had a fair amount of homework – loads of reading, teaching scripts, sequences, philosophy essays, and, of course, taking many, many required yoga classes.

It was all worth it. I cultivated a better understand of everything that makes yoga a complete mind-body experience, garnered more strength inside and out, deepened my own practice, and made some wonderful new friends. A bunch of us have formed a monthly philosophy discussion group and have already met a few times. Sure, we touch on the sutras or bhagavad gita for an hour or so…but we mostly just chat, laugh, drink wine, and eat snacks.

Here’s the whole gang on our last day of training, as exhausted and happy as can be. I am so grateful to have shared this experience with these particular people. They’re a special bunch.

Since then, I’ve been trying to gain teaching experience wherever and whenever I can. From March through the end of June, I taught yoga for the local elementary school teachers, which was so much fun. I kept each class very simple and stress-relieving; slow warm-up, simple flow and standing sequence, lots of yummy stretchy stuff, and a very long savasana. By the end of the school year, I had several “regulars”, all of whom are pulling some budgetary strings so that I might continue teaching that same class once school resumes in September. I’m also working with a few private clients and will be teaching yoga for teens at a local Summer camp through July and August. All good stuff that will hopefully lead to even more good stuff.

My own practice these days varies daily. If I take a studio class, then my home practice basically consists of long holds in down dog (5 minutes), forearm plank (3 minutes), baby cobra (3 minutes), navasana (1 minute), and sirsasana (5 minutes), with a few vinyasa between. If I don’t take a studio class, then my home practice is the same as above, plus some flowy fun and workshop-ish playtime with arm balances and inversions. Since Natasha now teaches a master class for yoga teachers each week, I let that be my time for seriousness and type-A focus on the mat and simply let my time be for me. It’s a perfect compromise.

Hoping to spend more time here as the Summer brings with it some extra time. Namaste.

My home practice right now is mostly focused on long holds. I usually start with five minutes in down dog, 1 minute in high plank, then alternate 3 times between 1 minute in forearm plank and 1 minute in low cobra. From there, it varies by what I feel I need on any given day. I connect the held postures with sun A’s and B’s and always take time to play with inversions, arm balances, and backbends. A long savasana is a must, too!

In terms of studio classes and how they coexist with my home practice, my schedule goes something like this most weeks (because sometimes work, kids, and other obligations need my attention more than asana):

M: Jasmine’s class or home practice

T: Home practice or rest, depending on my schedule and energy level

W: Jo’s class

Th: Home practice and Natasha’s class

F: Liz’s class and Teacher Training (We generally read and discuss on Friday nights. If we do any asana, it’s short and sweet.)

The classes are all “flow”, but Jasmine and Natasha lean heavily into Iyengar, alignment-focused territory. We only do a handful of postures per class, but work up to them, hold them, and hone them for a long, long time. Angelina and Jo are truly vinyasa flow, teaching longer sequences at a faster pace. Kate and Liz fall squarely in the middle of those two styles because they’re both YogaWorks alums, as I will be in March. That method instructs teaching a hybrid style of Ashtanga and Iyengar or, as my teaching tools manual calls it, “an alignment based flow”. Whatever you call it, it’s basically vinyasa flow with anatomically intelligent sequencing. Good stuff, hard work.

Teacher training is going very well. Natasha is an amazing instructor. She’s the real deal, the kind that runs a tight ship and truly knows her stuff. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to study so intensely with her. Everyone in the class feels that way, I think (I hope!). We started in September and have already covered so much material that I’m not even going to try and quantify it. Philosophy, asana, anatomy, alignment, actions, counteractions, modifications, adjustments, teaching tools, sequencing – there is so much to do and learn that it’s overwhelming sometimes! But it’s really the best kind of overwhelming, needing to do so much of something you love so deeply. Our copious homework involves loads of reading, writing teaching scripts, and learning anatomy, especially as it applies to asana. We also have to take two yoga classes per week, preferably with Natasha or one of her teaching assistants (like Liz and Kate). Best assignment ever.

This morning, I took Liz’s class. She and I were both at Natasha’s class last night and were both feeling the effects of what can only be described as thigh torture with deep backbends for dessert. So, Liz taught a well-paced, well-rounded flow to open the lower back. Never underestimate the power of utthita hasta padangustasana and its supine and side plank cousins. It was really the perfect counterpoint to last night and I left feeling about a million times better than I did when I walked in. Isn’t cool how asana can wear you out and lift you back up within the space of a day?

Hitchcock: Do all of the bird postures and their many, many variations – eagle, crow, pigeon, swan, bird of paradise, peacock.

Dark: Close your eyes in a posture that feels strong, but that you can hold for awhile (I’ve done it in down dog, warrior two, tree, trikonasana, urdhva dhanyurasana, and sirsasana). Stay for as long as you’d like. Is it scary or totally awesome? Or maybe a little of both?

A murder: Begin and end every Surya Namaskar B with crow pose. Try to do five Bs, ten crows. Murderous!

Headless horseman: Hold vatayanasana until you lose your mind. Or! Hold humble horse (which is actually a variation of goddess pose) for awhile and let your head just hang loose.

Linda Blair: Warm up with a ton of hip, hamstring, and shoulder openers, then practice poses that make you look like you’re in the throes of an exorcism, like visvamitrasana, eka pada sirsasana, bound lotus, bound compass, and (standing) kurmasana. (…or you can just take this class where the apex pose is referred to as “The Exorcist“).

Tricks: Play with handstand throughout Surya Namaskar B. Instead of moving through a vinyasa to switch sides, go right from warrior one on the right leg into handstand, then land with the left foot in front and come into warrior one on that side. Move through a vinyasa, then play with piking up to a handstand to get back to the front of the mat. Whee!

And, of course, you can’t have a Halloween yoga practice without the ultimate spooky pose…

Corpse pose: Spend some extra time in savasana, then rise from the dead like a zombie yogi.

Enjoy your Halloween! Namaste.

]]>https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/happy-halloween/feed/0ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenowdisplay-8Practicing Practicehttps://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/practicing-practice/
https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/practicing-practice/#respondTue, 28 Oct 2014 23:37:38 +0000http://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/?p=185…And, in a blink, three months went by without posting here. But it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. I’ve been busy – too busy to write for fun, but not too busy to maintain my daily practice. Life is good, so I’ll just pick up where I left off…

Once my hip healed completely in late July, I dove into preparing for my teacher training. The physical work was basically what you’d expect. I built strength, garnered more flexibility, honed my alignment, and worked on deepening certain postures (especially deep twists and backbends). Psychologically, my main, self-assigned challenge was figuring out how to become more comfortable in uncomfortable situations. My practice had evolved to a point where I’d acquired enough mental-muscle memories to keep me generally calm, mindful, and happy, but there were still moments, on and off mat, that caused me to flounder. I wanted to figure out: How could I learn to let my breath carry me through something that would normally cause me to tense up or give up too quickly?

The answer lies in the sutras, specifically (and most straightforwardly) 12 and 13. “Practice and non-reaction are required to still the patterning of consciousness. Practice is the sustained effort to rest in that stillness”.

Deep stuff, right? Patanjali is basically the Yoda of Yoga, so I think any effort to follow his teachings makes you an aspiring Jedi. And just like all the padawans discover in Star Wars, the mind-tricks take awhile to master.

So, I made it a bigger priority, practicing non-reaction when faced with heat, intensity, frustration, stress, and impatience – basically, anything that makes me antsy or temperamental. Non-reaction doesn’t mean that all these things happened unacknowledged. Believe me, they were acknowledged, but how I chose to receive them was calmer. I practiced focusing on my breath and gathering my thoughts for a moment before deciding whether or not to react. If I started feeling pulled by a strong emotion or desire, especially a potentially negative one, I asked myself questions to quickly self-assess before ceding control to said pull. Some introspective queries that came up often were: Can I breathe through this? Am I being as patient as possible? Do I understand the whole picture or am I focusing on a small detail? Is this something beyond my control? Physical asanas were extremely helpful in easing me through this work. If you can breathe through postures that feel intense, you’re essentially cultivating calm amidst chaos. That kind of slow evolution on the mat translates well into daily life.

Changing your own reflexive energy is hard work, though. Really hard. That said, like physical muscle memories, mental muscle memories get stronger when practiced each day. Over the last few months, I’ve grown more consistent in maintaining my focus and composure. As a result, I feel more at ease in my own skin and with my own happiness, which is a welcome, unexpected consequence of being deeply, conscientiously mindful. I’ve also started to truly understand that the mark of a diligent yoga practice isn’t the ability to do advanced postures, it’s the acceptance that we, as humans, are only as good as how we receive and react to what the world gives us, including ourselves. Whatever we feed with our energy will inevitably grow.

It’s a huge concept to embrace, but working toward it is a life’s work that epitomizes being your own boss. So much responsibility, so much freedom.

In my last post, which was a month ago already, I mentioned that I’d injured my hip somehow and was resting until it felt better. It was extremely painful initially – so much so that I could barely lift my foot off the ground! – so I spent almost two weeks doing nothing more strenuous than taking short walks and doing some light core work. Not being able to move around much was crazy-making. I had so much energy and no safe way to burn it, at least not without inherently accusing my hips of lying. The only yoga I could practice was the yamas, particularly ahimsa and satya. Healing meant no physical asanas, which made me really sad.

I saw my orthopedist and we had a nice, long chat about my exercise habits. The yoga, the pilates, the TRX – all great stuff, she said. The elliptical, on the other hand, was referred to as “the devil in machine form”. The elliptical’s repetitive motion was the culprit of my pain, causing inflammation to the hip and surrounding muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc. Bursitis and an injury to the gluteus medius was the official diagnosis. The treatment in the short term was what you’d expect – rest, ice, cortisone injections, anti-inflammatories. The long term treatment? No more elliptical. Not ever again. Not unless I wanted another honest, painful lecture from my hip.

So, out to the curb it went and, along with it, I hope, any future hip pain. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

It’s now been just over two weeks since I felt well enough to get back on my mat and move around normally again. My gluteus medius is still a bit sore with use, but the hip itself is great. Much, much better. I didn’t realize how chronically sore my hip actually was until it actually wasn’t anymore. Incidentally, by decreasing my pain, staying off the elliptical has made my yoga practice even stronger. By not inadvertently modifying things to lessen the load on my hip and the surrounding muscles, I can fully reap the benefits of each posture. I have more mobility within the hip and more stability around it. And that’s just in two weeks without using “the devil in machine form”.

I’m hopeful that more time without it will lead to more consistently nuanced agility, strength, and stability on my mat. I know that will be the most likely outcome if I continue to reciprocate my body’s honesty with equally honest, healing behaviors. Or if I, as Shakira says, “be wise/and keep on/reading the signs of my body.”

Asi es perfecto.

Namaste.

]]>https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/honest-hips/feed/0ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenowPractice 6.18-25.14https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/practice-6-18-25-14/
https://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/practice-6-18-25-14/#respondWed, 25 Jun 2014 15:09:38 +0000http://ifyoulivedhereyoudbehomenow.wordpress.com/?p=173Fact: Taking a fast flow class on the day of Summer solstice is no joke. Angelina had us do a ton of Sun A’s. I lost count after 15. We also did a ton of hip stuff – pigeon, wild thing, side plank with the top leg extended upward, etc – while moving through our normal flowy fun. I continued to work on transitioning from handstand into bakasana, which I can now do without falling most of the time. During backbends, I got Angelina’s blessing to work scorpion in pincha mayurasana. My shoulders were super warm from all those sun salutations and wanted to use it! It felt great.

I was bummed that I couldn’t make it to pilates or to Liz’s class last Friday. My daughter’s year-end class breakfast went a little longer than I had anticipated. I’m looking forward to getting there this week.

Monday’s classes were fun. There were several new faces in the TRX class, so Ebba had to slow things down a little. It was a good work out anyway, though. I definitely felt my triceps and legs afterward! Jasmine’s class was all about hamstrings – lengthening and strengthening. We did loads of Sun A and Sun B, plank work, eagle, triangle, prasarita A/headstand, standing splits, utthita hasta padangustasana, warrior 3, anjananeyasana, and hanuman. Janusirsasana and pashimottonasana wound us down before savasana.

Today, I’m resting. I did my home practice and spent some time on the elliptical yesterday and injured my left hip somehow. I’m prone to soreness in that joint and I think it might just be inflamed from overuse, but better to be safe than sorry. Ice, aleve, and rest today will hopefully help me feel strong enough to take my usual classes tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday. Whether it does or doesn’t, I made an appointment with an orthopedist for next week. Maybe a cortisone shot will help. I’ll keep you posted.